Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Dinosaur Eggs!

We have had fun for the past couple of weeks learning about dinosaurs. I have a student who is totally obsessed with everything dinosaur so I promised we would do a dinosaur unit! This will be one post out of two to cover all of our dinosaur adventures!

Always up for a huge, fun sloppy mess I decided to let the students paper mache their own eggs. Before I blew up the balloons I placed a little dinosaur inside. I got these at the Dollar Tree. They are squishy and fit right in the balloon. They come in three different dinosaurs (Triceratops, Stegosaurus, T-Rex).

We used the flour & water recipe to make the paste. It didn't take too long for them to cover the balloons. I suggest keeping them on the smaller side, the larger balloons weren't as sturdy once they dried, plus you want to make sure that there aren't any little holes in the eggs where the dinosaur can fall out. After they were dried, I let them paint their egg.

Once the eggs were dried, I popped the balloon. The balloon will shrivel up inside of the paper mache which is actually great because it makes it harder for the dinosaur to fall out of any holes that may be in the eggs from the students not covering them all of the way.We have been researching different kinds of dinosaurs. We used these QR code cards in our listening center... they are connected to Safe Share YouTube videos that are fun and informative. We also used the information sheets to learn about each dinosaur.

Students wrote three facts about the dinosaur in their egg, practiced reading their facts and then read them aloud while being recorded. I took the videos and made QR codes, attached them to the eggs and made a listening center recording sheet. Now students can scan an egg, listen to the recording and guess the dinosaur in their classmates' egg. So many speaking and listening standards covered, as well as fluency practice.

I plan on having a reveal to see how many students correctly guessed the dinosaurs in their classmates' eggs. I'll let the kids take their eggs home and hatch them with their parents!This was such a fun activity! It's good to get a little messy every once in a while! You can grab up the the QR codes, information sheets and much more in my All About Dinosaurs unit!